The second annual Kanellakis Memorial Lecture was presented on December 4 by Prof. Christos Papadimitriou of the University of California, Berkeley. This lecture series is in memory of Paris Kanellakis, a prominent computer scientist and Brown faculty member who died with his family in an airplane crash in December 1995.

Papadimitriou, a major figure in computer science, was Kanellakis's thesis advisor at MIT. His lecture, on "Algorithmic Problems in the Internet," discussed how the Internet, and particularly the World Wide Web, has influenced research in theoretical computer science (TCS). He began by stating that the early goals ...

CS undergrads Hanna Rohde, Adam Kirsch and Ben Sigelman have been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's 2003 Outstanding Undergraduate Award program. Many congratulations, all!

Max Salvas, CS's long-time (since '83!) Hardware Technician, has just won an award in President Simmons' new Staff Bonus Program for Extraordinary Achievement in 2001-02. He was recognized for his energy and initiative in almost single-handedly building all CS's machines for our most recent equipment upgrade.

In the past we've done our usually triennial equipment upgrades by lengthy and laborious negotiations with vendors. Last year, though, we decided that, to be competitive, we had to upgrade not every three but every two years. The prospect was a daunting one until it became clear that, with Max's ...

Great news! Pascal Van Hentenryck has just been awarded the 2002 INFORMS Computing Society (ICS) prize for research excellence in the interface between operations research and computer science. INFORMS is the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences; its Computing Society has awarded this prize since 1986.

The objectives of this prize are (1) to promote the development of high-quality work advancing the state of the art in the operations research/computer science interface; (2) to publicize and reward the contributions of those authors/researchers who have advanced the state of the art; and (3) to increase the visibility ...

On November 7, at 7 pm, CS's own Assistant Professor Shriram Krishnamurthi will be on a three-person panel on "The Role of Writing in Teaching Science". This panel, sponsored by the Writing Fellows Program and held in the Petterutti Lounge, will be of particular interest to CS majors, many of whom have long wondered why they're required to take a writing course. Shriram says, "Lacking any wisdom in the matter, I plan my opening salvo to be 'Why does any computer scientist need to know to write?', followed initially by some arguments for why they ...

Bill Smart (PhD '02) and Cindy Grimm (PhD '96) Make the News

From the October 27, 2002 St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

"Meet Lewis, the world's first robotic photographer, a machine that may take pictures better than you do. The 300-pound, trash-can-sized robot rolls around a room, detects faces and takes photographs based on classic composition rules. Lewis debuted Sunday night in St. Louis at a conference sponsored by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. 'You can think of it as a computer on wheels,' said Bill Smart, an assistant professor in computer science at Washington University. He ...

On Sunday, October 20, the all-graduate-student football team won the 2002 High-Intensity Intramural Flag-Football Championship. Over half the team is a member of the Computer Science Department. This is the team's second consecutive championship. Both this year's and last year's final games were against the fraternity Thete, and in each game, the grad students won by one point. Go Computer Science!

Steve Reiss and Shriram Krishnamurthi have just been awarded an NSF ITR grant, making a total of nine of these prestigious awards in the CS department. This grant, entitled 'Consistent software evolution,' provides $450,000 in funding and will last for three years.

The authors say of their project, 'Software is multidimensional: it has many representations besides the program source, including formal specifications, test suites, documentation and even the development history. As software evolves, these dimensions must stay consistent and reflect one another as thoroughly as possible. In practice, however, while these representations are usually consistent when first created, they ...

Prof. Christos Papadimitriou, U.C. Berkeley, is the invited speaker at the second annual Paris Kanellakis Memorial Lecture to be held Wednesday, December 4, at 4pm in the Lubrano conference room on the 4th floor, CIT building. A reception will follow the talk.

Christos was Paris's Ph.D. advisor and close friend, making him a particularly appropriate speaker for this occasion. The Paris Kanellakis Memorial lecture was inaugurated in 2001. It is an annual event scheduled as close to Paris's birthday, December 3, as possible. Christos will talk on "Algorithmic Aspects of the Internet."

CS is very pleased to announce that FIDELITY INVESTMENTS is the newest member of our Industrial Partners Program. Although there are many diverse businesses under the Fidelity umbrella, CS will be associated mostly with the Smithfield operation and FCAT, the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, an important part of Fidelity's continuing commitment to technology.

FCAT serves as a bridge linking Fidelity's technology resources with business executives who seek practical "high-tech" solutions to critical business problems. It also provides an environment in which Fidelity's business and technology leaders and staff can explore advanced technologies such as ...